A prophecy is a terrible thing. Once written, they are not easily erased; once heard, they are not easily forgotten. The city would fall that day, of that much no one doubted, yet that knowledge alone was not enough to keep panic from ensuing when the cry went out for the soldiers to take up their arms. Refugees were ushered through the gates, those amount them with strength to fight were given arms, the rest were ordered to take shelter. Civilians ran through the streets as the enforcers desperately tried to keep order, not a soul among them certain of how the next few hours would play out. All around the sacred city, chaos reigned.
As daylight broke, the first outrunners of the coming armies came into view. Earth ponies, barded in blue and gold, galloping in rhythm across the planes. A lone unicorn ran with them, a banner bearing the a joined sun and moon flapped from a pole on its back. As they neared the walls the massive gates opened to allow the city's own ambassadors out to treat with them. A cloaked sphinx, majestic and glorious to behold, flanked by two guardians: a minotaur and a chimera, both armed and armored, the seal Discordian symbol emblazoned upon their plates.
Their meeting was brief and bitter, but no blood was shed during the parley. The ambassadors reentered the city and, as the great wooden gates closed behind them, announced that their enemy would give no quarter unless the entire city yielded. This was met with shouts of disdain, as was to be expected from warriors who had been trained to give their lives defending the capital. The city would never kneel to the forces of the north... and as such, they would all die.
The bloodshed began only a few hours later, unfolding just as the Elders had predicted. pegasi descended from the sky, their approach hidden by the blinding sun. As the defenders rose into the air to ward them off, the earth ponies began their strike upon the walls. Battering rams hammered the gate as war waged overhead, the broken forms of chimeras and pegasi raining down as both sides collided.
A small force of griffons joined the fray from the Equestrian side, expecting to be joined by their brethren from the Discordian city. It was not until they neared guard towers around the main gate that they realized their mistake. The twisted stone towers had been constructed to resemble massive tree trunks with huge, thorny vines wrapping around them. As the towers themselves came into view, the griffons found that the vines had been further decorated during the night. The corpses of countless griffon agents from within the city had been impaled upon the granite thorns; a grisly warning to the traitorous race.
Many of the invading griffons were cut down as they attempted to flee, pursued by winged defenders whose friends and family had perished in the battles to the north. For the next hour or so the battle raged with the defenders holding the advantage. It was not until the unicorn battalions arrived, along with the bulk of the Army of the Sun, that the tide began to turn. The Equestrian mystics made short work of the defenders upon the battlements, bathing the ramparts of the wall in flames of every imaginable color.
Several groups teleported themselves beyond the walls, taking the defenders by surprise. The minotaurs did their best to fight off the miniature magi, but their brutal strikes did little against the stalwart enchantments and vicious spells that the unicorns unleashed upon them. It fell to the sphinxes, the last remnants of a race whose very existence was a testament to their natural mastery of magic, to counter their power. Several of the creatures appeared around the main gate's courtyard and, with a rhythmic chant in their own sacred tongue, stole away the unicorns' ability to weave spells themselves.
Without the advantage of their magic, the unicorns were torn apart in a matter of seconds as minotaur and chimera alike descended upon them from all sides.
It was only a moment later a warning cry erupted from overhead as the earth began to shake. Silence fell over the battlefield as all noise was forcefully drawn away. The wind changed direction on both sides of the wall, the air itself becoming hot, heavy, almost unbreathable. Then, all at once, sound came crashing back into the world, the wind returned, stronger than ever, and the massive wooden gate that protected the city's entrance exploded into a hurricane of splinters and iron shrapnel. Where the giant oaken doors had been stood the silhouette of an alicorn; wings spread, mane billowing in the wind, horn alight with some vile magic. The rays of light that shone forth from behind it made it impossible for the defenders to look directly ahead for more than a few seconds.
Te deafening CRACK of the gates' being broken had left much of the chimeran army stunned, too dazed to defend themselves as death itself marched through their walls. Thousands were cut down where they stood before the first attempts at retaliation were finally made. The defenders struggled to reform and drive the horses back, but all of there efforts would prove meaningless just a few moments later.
The minotaurs were the first to succeed in securing a foothold amongst the chaos, rallying the other guardians to their position. But just as their ranks began to swell, the sky became dark. The few who had time to look up saw the moon venture to the apex of its orbit in the noon-time sky, larger than any of them had ever seen it, covering the sun with its girth. And from its center rained down a new hail of pegasi, unlike any they had encountered before. Dark coats, leathery batwings, and razor-sharp teeth that would have shamed most dragons; the creatures descended upon the battle with terrible, earsplitting whinnies, the delight they took from the carnage ringing clearly in their voices.
And above all the other noise came laughter, beginning high and girlish but suddenly shifting to a deep, booming pitch that could only have foreshadowed the approach of some demon in the night. There, from the center of her terrible army of shadows, swept the second alicorn. Shielded in dark blue plate upon a pitch-black coat, the silvery outline of the crescent moon graced her armor. Her laughter echoed through the city as her minions descended upon the streets, breaking through buildings of wood, brick, and stone as if they were paper.
It was at that point that the battle ended and the massacre began. The city would burn, from the tallest towers of the noble palaces down to the half-buried hovels of the poorer districts. The fighting would rage by the gates for another hour before the attackers would finally spill into the streets, claiming the lives of all but the few thousand whom the Elders had chosen. And it is those chosen ones whom we must turn our gaze to now. For the fate of the rest of the city is still far too clear in my mind... far too painful...
The Elder led the way, through wooden gates and iron doors. Through dirt and sand and stone they descended, down and down, into the heart of the Barricade. Ten thousand souls of all different ages, the last broken fragments that would remain once the two great races once the bloodshed above was complete. Sphinx and chimera, the former masters of the Planes of Chaos before the war had ever even been conceived.
From the hidden door within the capital building the line of chosen stretched down into the great mountain; the passage so narrow that it required them to proceed in single file. Only those who possessed an aura of magical awareness had been picked, and from those, only so many as could be fit into the undercity. They had been piling into the passage for hours, yet only now were they finally coming to the end.
It is here that we see the final members of the Council, those who had not joined the battle at the gates. Some were too weak to fight, others had been chosen to live, and the remaining few were there to guard the secret doorway, knowing full well that their own lives were forfeit by doing so. They had been instructed to act as if they were there for an emergency meeting, making the room appear to be nothing more than an ordinary conference chamber. The passage would be sealed from both sides and enchanted to appear to be just another bit of wall.
Among the last of the group to be ushered into the passage was a chimera with the head of a serpent, his wolf-headed wife, and the newborn child, barely a week old. The husband walked upright on his hind legs, a long pike clutched in his right claw like a walking stick. With his left arm, he cradled the child, quietly speaking his goodbye to the son he would never see grow to adulthood. The female stood upon all fours for the moment, but soon she would take back the child and make her way down the hidden corridor with the rest of the chosen, forcing her to switch to two legs.
As the last of future survivors passed through the doorway, the wall sealed itself behind them. The stonework was flawless, completely indistinguishable from the rest of the walls in the chamber. The guardians who had stayed behind to guard it placed their weapons down upon the table in the center of the room and took their places, awaiting the doom that was about to sweep down upon them. Scimitar, greatsword, pike, halberd, and trident all laid upon the alabaster table, awaiting the taste of blood.
It was only a matter of minutes before that thirst would be sated. The city would burn; its citizens would be slaughtered, its defenders crushed. Days would go by as the last holdouts were destroyed by the Equestrian forces, those hidden within them put to death quickly and unceremoniously. Weeks passed as the city itself was slowly demolished, its long history brought to an end in less time than it had taken to construct even the simplest of its buildings. The following decades would see that that history was remembered by none: scrolls were burned, maps redrawn, entire annals rewritten to ensure that no mention of the city remained.
Yet for a thousand years, deep beneath the remnants of the Barricade, the a new society had formed to carry on the essence of that lost civilization. The remaining Elders had shaped their charges into a functioning nation, complete with a new Council and its own religion. Their society was driven not solely by their shared hatred of the Equestrian races, but by the final piece of the prophecy that had led them into hiding to begin with.
It would not be until generations after the fall of the city. Yet if we remained vigilant, with an eye always fixed on the horizon, one day we would bear witness to the coming of a savior. Their birth would bring about a new age for our people and they will lead us out of hiding once and for all. We would be able to cast away the guise we had made to hide us among the Equestrians, and be free from the fear of extinction which had plagued our minds for so many centuries. And, ultimately, our savior would be the one to bring about the fall of those who cast down our king, avenging him and all who fell in loyalty to him.
And so we have waited, disguised as the very creatures we have been at war with, for thousands of years. We have waited, but never have we forgotten what was lost to us so many generations before. We have waited and waited, always watching for the signs to show us some glimpse of the light of our Deliverer... And at long last.... You have been born!
"Disciples!" The old sphinx let his voice ring forth as he stepped out onto the balcony over the subterranean streets. "The time is at last upon us! Our watch has ended! On this day, in this hour, the prophecy has been fulfilled! So many centuries have we waited, and at last it has come to pass!'
The room behind him surged with light as the sapphire flames of a massive fire pulsed in a pit at its center. Their glow stained the room blue, their heat driving back all but the most devoted of the priests. Within the flames sat an twitching orb, green and smooth but for a single crack running from top to center. It shook and rattled within the flames, letting out growls and curses in some long forgotten tongue.
All at once the fires died out, bathing the chamber in darkness. The priests moved closer, the Elder on the balcony turned to see what had happened. As they neared the egg a second crack appeared and one final growl escaped its dark blue shell. Several of the priests understood the signs and, at the last moment, dove back out of the circle. Two were not so fortunate and, as the egg hatched, they were engulfed and incinerated by the rush of blue flame that erupted from its core. The wave of fire singed the ceiling, its heat washing over the Watchers and out onto the balcony where it swirled about the Elder's head.
Upon the floor, in the center of the binding circle, their savior lay curled in a ball. Fast asleep in the midst of the flames, the child slowly breathed in and out, the fire itself growing and shrinking with each breath.
The priests looked down upon it, their eyes filled with adoration and love. Tiny wings protruded form its back, far too small to be of any use for another few years. Its head resembled that of a tiny lizard, a forked tongue slipping out of its mouth every few breaths. Its body was armored in a blue, chitinous shell, like that of a beetle. Each leg seemed to belong to a different animal, but before the priests could identify any of them the child wrapped its long scorpion-like tail about itself, making itself little more than a ball of plated scales. "At last..." spoke one Elder as he neared the circle. "We must finish the binding, quickly, before the child wakes!"
The ritual would take hours to complete, but the little savior would sleep through every moment of it. They would have one less Elder by the time they were done, but at long last their path to revenge would be nearly complete. The child would have to be given time to grown, to discover its fate for itself. But after having waited thousands of years for it to be born, what was another eight in the grand scheme of things...
The ritual was complete, the binding successful, and from sacred flames, the chimeran savior soon awakened...