Equestria is a world filled with many wonders and horrors alike. From magic and monsters to dungeons and dragons a world like this hides untold secrets.
This is but one of those many secrets, a legend only a grip of beings know of and even far less that can possibly confirm if the tales are true, this is the legend of the Silent Guardian.
Long ago before the realm above could take shape and house living beings their was a world below yet not physically as this realm existed in another dimension. Today this world is known as Tartarus, a dimension controlled by the ones who rule above as a prison for demons most foul. But back then it was a world known as the Sanctum a place where beings today could be classified as Gods or Demons and everything in between. Very very little is known of what these beings did here and even less of what they looked like, however only one event keeps occurring in old tomes and writings, this is known as the Great Slaughter.
Within this zone there lies in the inner workings a prison-like area that housed billions if not trillions of horrific souls that lived in agony all clawing to break through the gates that closed in on the imprisoned souls. It is said that the wall was only two inches thick but even after eons and eons of attempted damage from the crazed horrors could put less than a scratch on the wall. The wall is said to be infused with magic long lost to time. Since the start of time, not one being could ever come close to escaping.
Until that day. One demon that is said to be the first to be imprisoned by the elder gods for stealing arcane magic began his riot. "Will will take back what we deserve! We will unleash a bloodbath unlike any this world has ever seen!"
Nearly from the start, it planned a way to escape its hell by fighting with other inmates and consuming their souls to increase its power. It would be untold decades before the first and only attempt at freedom would be attempted.
It roused up the other demons both weak and powerful to attack the wall. The guards awoke from their millennial slumber to end the attack but were quickly destroyed by the first demon. Billions of attacks were made at the wall both physical and magical, millions would be killed in the process in which would last for months but after so long a crack was made and not long after another and another until the wall fell and limitless demons were unleashed into the Sanctum.
That is if not for the Silent Guardian.
Before the creation of the prison the builders and Gods that controlled the realm feared for this very moment of tragedy and created a being of might and power. Several Gods gave their souls to give power to one unnamed guardian to protect the Sanctum for all eternity and beyond. After his ascension, he waited at the front of the gate. He waited and he waited for millions upon millions of years training his mind and soul for the very day...
And that day came with the horrible sound of molten rock breaking and millions of demons screaming all at once.
The wall shattered and an uncountable number of demons rushed to the Guardian as if an ocean to a grain of sand.
The Guardian finally moved and fought the horde. It is said the Guardian used powers that could destroy planets to defend his home. Billions and billions and maybe trillions of demons were slaughtered under the Guardian’s might. It is said he never spoke or even made a single noise during the battle that lasted a thousand years until…
The impossible happened.
A clawed hand broke through the Guardian’s invincible armor. A sneak attack by the first demon, an attack it was waiting to attempt since the battle started. In one hit the Guardian was defeated and thrown into the sea of demon blood that he created. Without defense the Sanctum quickly fell and the first took control of everything within.
The Guardian laid defeated and humiliated in a pool of broken flesh and bones. He had failed his creators.
It is said not long after this one of the few surviving Gods waged a rebellion with the help of the inhabitants from above that have recently developed known today as Alicorns. The first was forced into hiding and many of the remaining demons escaped to the surface world of Equestria. Today those demons take many forms but many can be found in the accursed Everfree forest, the ground zero of the event.
It is said the God found the Guardian’s broken body, morphed and changed by absorbing so much tainted blood but still alive. “You have fought well...but you failed us.” The god was met with silence. The God stripped the Guardian's power away, leaving a hollowed husk of a corrupted, tainted being. “You are banished, never return.”
Over the centuries many witnessed the failed Guardian wandering the Everfree. Always seeming to keep others who venture too deep out. For what purpose? That is still to be unraveled.
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Spines the Dragoness closed the very old book slowly. She shivered at the words she read. ‘None of that could be real of course...just some dumb fiction.’ The book’s name seemed to be etched in by a claw and all handwritten.
‘Mythikós.’ It might have meant Legend in old Pony Latin but she wasn’t certain. More passages were in this book but many pages were tainted with a dried black substance and this story was the only one left fully intact from start to finish. Other chapters held titles such as, ‘Lurker, Stalker, Harbinger, Dead Clicker.’ And much more. What she could gather of these seemed to be details of monstrous creatures and how to avoid or fight them. Very rough ink sketches left a slight twinge in her young heart. That was when she decided to put it back in its place, which was in the very back of the library section under a very small stack of books categorized as ‘Mythos Dread’ Unsure what it meant or how it got here Spines placed the book away and went to her room for sleep.
Horrible off-setting nightmares of demons and Lurkers plagued her for years to come.