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// Prologue: The Gray Dawn 
// Story: Twilight's Dawn 
// by Dinkledash 
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I dreaded the terrors that lay before us as I opened the door and stepped out into the gray dawn.  The stench was overwhelming, as ponies of every type and description lay in heaps entangled in the guts and drowned in the ichor of monstrous behemoths, toothy imps and other, much less describable demons.  Any survivors of that horde from the cold depths of space would be gone, must be gone my now.  Fires burned at all corners of Canterlot and Ponyville, and the dead lay in heaps on the plain between as a fine dusting of ash and bone meal rode the wind to coat my nostrils, causing me to sneeze and retch at the same time.  I needed to take my charges away from this hell, and quickly.  There was not enough food and water in our hidden mountain sanctuary to last another day.  I prayed to the spirits of my departed princesses to keep the worst of the worst out of view of the young colts and fillies filling the cavern behind me.  

I cried out to them, using the voice of dead Canterlot as sweet Luna had taught me: "BRACE YOURSELVES!  FOLLOW ME, AND LOOK NEITHER LEFT NOR RIGHT! DO NOT FLY! STAY WITH THE HERD!"  Praying that they would listen, I plunged down the narrow path to the valley floor with the pathetic and terrified remnant of our once great nation behind me, crying, screaming and puking and voiding their bladders in terror as they ran.  "DO NOT LOOK!" I said in a Voice that commanded obedience, and some heeded, but many could not, as the slaughterhouse smell wafted through the fetid air and awoke primal fears from an earlier age, when ponies were but dumb animals, mastered, and often eaten, by Man.  Several of my young charges reverted to atavism, the intelligence leaving their eyes as insanity and fear crowded out reason.  They whinnied and screamed and bucked, at least two charging off down slopes too steep for passage, to tumble broken and bloody to that charnel house below.  I could do nothing for them, and if I had any I tears remaining, I would have liked to cry enough at least to wash this dust made of the bones of my race from my eyes.  

The rest of my pitiful host followed, either intelligently or with the instinct to stay with the herd.  I could heal those later, if we made it to our planned destination, trusting whatever dead powers may remain to protect us.  I resisted the urge to look upon the horrors of the plain myself, for fear that I would see a tuft of rainbow colored mane, a broken party cannon, or a twisted yellow body surrounded by the shattered forms of animals that died fighting the unthinkable.  Would I see a glittering bejeweled mace, or the torn and battered hat of a dear friend?  They died fighting, while I stayed in a cave and hid with the children.  I am an alicorrn, and I may never die, but neither will my shame.  

From behind a boulder, a shadow lurched to block the path in front of me.  My eyes beheld for the first time one of the horrors that descended from the ether to our world on a mission of mindless extermination.  Perhaps it had been too busy gorging itself on pony flesh, or was pinned under the bodies of the fallen when the black, cold portals carried the remnants of the horde back to the cosmic madness from which they were formed.  This one was red, though whether that was the color of its skin or stains from the gore all around us, I could not tell.  It was bipedal, more than twice my height and it grinned at me with a mouth full of bone needles.  The eyes above the hellish maw were the watery blue of a newborn foal, mild and utterly devoid of the hunger that radiated from the rest of it, making it all the more terrifying.  Below, it appeared that several organs and some of the bones were on the outside of the rangy red torso, but it did not appear to be injured.  I refused the call of terror that my subconscious screamed as it attempted to flee to the false security of madness.

I could not check my speed, not with the mindless, terrified herd behind me, so without much thought I reached into my mind-spirit and opened the door to the sun which Princess Celestia had shown me in the previous week.  Under the thick leaden clouds, the solar flare which erupted from my horn burned the landscape a pure brilliant white.  The concentration of photons struck the demon in the middle of the chest, and I watched as layers of skin ablated, organs boiled and burst and bones charred, turning to ashes as the abattoir mouth opened in a silent scream.  The eyes remained unchanged, however, until they too popped into masses of foul steam as the solar winds swept the burning shreds of the thing from our path.  It was over in less than a second, and I passed through the space it had occupied, holding my breath against the foul vapors that remained.  I closed the door within my mind, the landscape darker than ever in the afterglow, and cursed myself for using so much power; that spell would be visible for a hundred furlongs and more.  I scanned the skies in fear as we continued, but saw none of their flying nightmares approaching.  Perhaps they had all made it back to the portals for their return trip.

"TO THE ARK!"  I led the survivors down the winding narrow pass to the docks, where I prayed the great ship would still be, hidden by my magic.  The sea ponies would help us establish a New Equestria, far away from here, on a distant continent, until our numbers grew and time would heal this now desolated plain.  We would return, I swore it.