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// Prologue (part 2) 
// Story: The last of Humanity 
// by ChiefKitsune 
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Slowly the world comes back into focus as the Gryphoness looks out over Canter Valley though the image is slightly blurred by her tears as she comes up from that memory she had hidden deep within her soul and one she had never seen before.  Anger and sadness filled the gryphon as she wiped the tears from her eyes and the feathers around them before looking over to Discord about ready to do something, even though she didn't know what she wanted to do.  It died in her throat as her beak was half open but she is frozen by the sight before her. 

Sitting on the ledge of the overlook sat the mismatched being looking down at his paw and talon as silently tears rained down from his eyes.  The tears being normal as he seemed to be to broken up about what he did to allow his magic to do anything different.  Even though his magic begged for him to make his tears for into the shapes of crocodiles but he resisted.  Hearing the gryphon gasp being the first sign of life from her since her memories began to replay for the poor gyphon, the god of chaos slowly looked up with his sad eyes to meet her golden eyes.  

What she saw in those eyes as they met killed any anger she might have been feeling for the being before her, but the pure look of being broken stayed her anger for now.  Looking back to the far wall of the overlook Discord stands up and begins to slowly walk towards it, motioning with his talon for the gyrphon to follow him.  And in silence do the two approach the wall of rock that has stood for so long against the elements and time.  With a wave of his paw does the rock begin to quiver like water as something rises from the depths.

Before long a the gryphon makes out an ancient doorway created by a race of ponies long gone who lived underground their whole lives and worked the stone in such ways that even modern ponies didn't know how they did it.  The large doorway was hidden behind the rock for an unknown amount of time but it was massive and showed signs of being important to the dwemer ponies.  That's when the hybrid realized that they were standing at the entrance to one of their most important temples,  the acinet torches along the walls light from Discord's magic to light the way deep into the mountain.  He begins to walk softly down the way and so overwhelmed by everything the gryphon follows without a complaint.  

She doesn't notice as they grow further and further away from the entrance that it reseals itself hiding the temple once more from the modern world of ponies.  As the two trek deeper and deeper into the halls of the temple in the mountain the torches light ahead of them and go out behind them leaving the area around them lite.  Looking up the gryphon who studied ancient civilizations and was a well-known archeologist she saw carvings of the true dwemer ponies something that had long ago thought lost to time.

In them she saw that while the beings looked like ponies they were quite different in that their forlegs ended in hands with thumbs and their heads looked more canine similar to a Dimond Dog's head and as questions began to boil within the hen Discord began to explain.

"Yes, what you're thinking about the dwemer ponies is true." He looks back his eyes showing a bit less of that brokenness from before. "They were once humans who hide underground from me, to try and escape my demons.  It failed for them but rather than doing as I had done with the rest of humanity," they round another corner and pass a few locked doors and side passages but Discord leads on.  "You see they had survived for nearly a century underground before I found them after I ended the last human on the surface.  And upon the surface, I had begun to create a new world with whatever came to my mind as I took the bodies of the humans that didn't become my army and I reshaped them into grotesque mockeries of their old forms.  I had my entertainment for many years as they scurried about underground and grew larger creating vast cities underground with long underground highways connecting them all as they flourished."

Entering a large hall with broken stone tables and chairs showing this was once an eating area they stopped to look at a vast painting of the surface that the dwemer once knew but knew it was lost to the demon army.  It was a breath taking scene though simple that it was as it was a simple over look of a lush valley with a small little town nestled inside with the sun rising above the far hills or setting.  Painting the whole valley in golden light, reminding the gryphon of the overlook they had left not long ago.

"I imagine that had that group of young men and women who thought I had left not returned to the surface, or at the sight of the disordered world they had been told about once when they were young.  And return to the depths of the earth as a sign that I was still around.  But no they saw the sun for the first time ever in their lives or even their parents lives.  As their grand parents were the only ones that truly remember the time before."  With a sigh they move on and out of the dinning hall.

"But there they were on the surface and they saw a mostly intact town that they wanted to see if they could find anything that they could use.  It just so happened that I was rebuilding the little town to what it was like before I arrived though I don't remember why I was doing so.  But I was and that's when we came across each other, was easily one morning as I was walking the quite streets of the little town.  And as soon as they saw me they fled to their tunnel but the damage had been done and I knew humanity still existed in some form.  So I followed them to their Thaig as they called their cities, and found them to be quite different to what humanity once was.  So instead of doing as I had done before I decided to infuse all of the four Thaigs with my magic and watch what happens."  They continue deeper into the long lost Thaig.

"What happened was something not even I was expecting as they all began to change rapidly and before they knew it they were as you saw before ponies with canine heads and hands instead of forehooves.  My magic had also rewritten their culture making them more akin to what human's called dwarves.  Though they worshiped anything from before they remember of a race they had no name for but felt close too.  They called them the makers and they were referring to humans but my magic made them forget they once were one in the same.  And it was so different that I decided to let them be for the time being."  They enter a large corridor about as big as the throne room in Catnerlot Castle to a pair of old wooden doors that at the mere touch on light seemed to turn to dust.  Within the room behind those once great doors was a true throne room.  One that put any made by ponies to shame and there at the far end on was something that the gryphon recognized very well making her look between it and Discord as she was struck speechless.

For there at the end of the Throne room was a shrine to a grey stone statue of a human soldier broken and beaten seemingly to have been carved by a master to show his pain and lose.  It was a face she knew well having seen it in the mirror of her dreams for many years.  There raised into a passion of honor was her petrified human self.