With only short warning threat came again upon the land of Equestria.
Scouts returned to Canterlot with a frightful report: great danger was coming from across the sea. A Diablerie Dragon – an especially wicked breed of dragon which had on its forehead a crooked, spiral horn filled with poisonous magic – named Wryzard the Wretched was flurrying over the shimmering sea, straight towards Canterlot. His intent was plain: to descend upon the capital city and unleash the worst of his furious flame, dousing everything with his caustic magic.
Celestia – Princess of the Sun; Bearer of the Elements of Harmony; Princess over all Equestrian ponies – was determined to avert disaster. However, it had been six hundred years since the banishment of her sister and co-ruler, the self-proclaimed Nightmare Moon, and over those long centuries of lonely rule the sun princess had let decay important wisdom she had once memorized so well. Slowly a foolish and blinding pride had come into her; generous yet selfish; egotistical yet not vain. Many centuries as a single sovereign had caused her to forget the true reason for working cooperatively with others; to forget the strength inherent in faith and reliance; to forget the courage needed to surrender to a fear by trusting in a love.
An essential lesson in the magic of friendship, sadly lost to disuse.
In her heart was the sincere wish to protect all of her little ponies from danger, but in her mind was the mistaken belief that only she could bear the responsibility. No other pony could be allowed to shoulder the dangerous duty. Any risk whatsoever to others was unacceptable to her, no matter how unimaginably important the defense.
That thin crack in her otherwise superb character led to the folly which followed, but would also recement her forgotten lesson in her heart.
Yet even teachers forget how some good lessons can be so painfully cruel.
Princess Celestia commanded the Royal Guard of Canterlot to collect and lead all the citizens of the mountain city into the relative safety of the castle and stay there with them. The loyal guards were strictly ordered to remain hidden in the castle and to not engage the dragon under any circumstances. Her intended plan was to wield the great magical power of the Elements of Harmony and face the monster by herself.
But Wryzard arrived sooner than she had anticipated. She had not finished her preparations by the time his attack began.
A demon’s shadow over the city.
A sunless, dark day in Canterlot.
At that critical moment, with the vulnerable city about to be smothered by the evil curse churning in the dragon’s fire-filled throat, there appeared Prideheart, a high-ranking unicorn of the Royal Guard. He had defied the princess’s orders by emerging from the castle, and he was the only pony in all of the Royal Guard to have done so.
Like the princess, he was one staunchly unwilling to see even a single pony harmed. He could not bear the thought of it. He rose and stood atop the highest castle tower, alone between city and dragon, and he put forth all of his magic into a shield over the city.
Wryzard rained down his wicked fire, flames sick with a toxic spell weaved together by the dragon’s crooked horn.
Dauntless, Prideheart never let his shield slip even as the black dragonbreath pounded upon his protective bubble. But the assault was relentless, Prideheart’s strength began to wane, and as he weakened it allowed the foul spell within the fire to corrode his magic, mixing into his own magical power. His shield did not fail, but some of the sinister curse originally meant for Canterlot wormed its way into the pony’s body instead.
His sacrifice was not in vain. The precious time his heroic stand had bought allowed Princess Celestia to complete her preparations. Summoning the power of the Elements of Harmony she banished Wryzard the Wretched back across the sea, never to return.
Canterlot, and Equestria, were saved.
But the price of that safety was laid entirely upon the broken hero Prideheart. The dark corruption which had entered him had scarred him too deeply to ever be fully healed: his horn had been shattered, forever breaking his magic, and deformed marks had been carved permanently into his face, including the death of one of his eyes. The corrosive illness was tenacious and incurable, taking up residence inside him in the form of a constant, exhausting pain.
Princess Celestia, for her part, was taken immediately by grief. She swiftly understood her own role in the tragedy that had occurred: if she had only been wise enough to have trusted in the aid of others – to have relied faithfully on other ponies as she had once been able to do long ago – then she would have allowed all of the Royal Guard to have stood together against Wryzard. Their combined magic would have been enduring enough to have safely held the beast at bay while she had readied the Elements. Not a single one of them would have been so greatly exposed to his corruption as to have been actually harmed.
But as it had gone, it had been her ignorant choice that had put Prideheart in the position to have made the noble, tragic choice which he had.
She made no effort to avoid blaming herself.
A short time later, a ceremony for Prideheart was held in the throne room of Canterlot Castle. Before all present, the sun princess humbly confessed to her complete culpability in what had occurred. Sincerely she apologized to the valiant pony who had shouldered the cost of her failure. She pardoned entirely his violation of her wrongly given order to stay hidden. To him she awarded a rightly earned Medal of the Valorous Heart; a great honor recognizing any of the Royal Guard who are injured in the line of duty.
But before that ceremony...
In the first days after his wounding, Prideheart had been bedridden. Curtains drawn tight to dim the sunlight, he had laid in the endless dark of his room and had searched for what little peace could be found after such an grievous injury. Yet rest had eluded him at every turn. His new physical pain had constantly blared across his senses, unwelcomingly invading his every moment. Through the long and lonely silences it had become his closest company.
The excruciatingly slow hours over those days of recovery had driven him into bitter, secluded thought.
Worse than any damage taken by his body was the wound he had taken in his heroic soul. A cancerous anguish had consumed him. Not an anguish born of his damaged flesh, or of the terrible curse he had absorbed, but born of the failure of the princess.
The sun princess who had failed Canterlot.
Had failed her ponies.
Had failed egregiously in the most sacred of all duties: to protect others.
Prideheart valued protecting the lives of ponies above all else. Boundlessly chivalrous was his love for others, most especially foals. Early in his youth he had felt the call of his cutie mark; it had pulled him to the Royal Guard like the moon pulls on the oceans. He had aspired to don their armor as far back as his memory ran. Easily his full-hearted dedication had earned him a position among them at his very first opportunity, and swiftly his valor had allowed him to climb ranks. Not at any point had he ever doubted his choices. Even outside of his official duties he had committed himself to others, living and breathing a life of protection and service with all his heart.
Willingly.
Resolutely.
Without compromise.
The duty had run within him as powerfully as his blood.
For years he had loyally worn that golden armor, and for years he had eagerly listened to Princess Celestia speak sagely about the different righteous virtues to which ponies should commit themselves. He had lapped up her wisdom about magic and Harmony. He had echoed all the ideals she had publicly praised. He had believed in her light and leadership.
And he had been betrayed.
When the hour for true action had come, she had given the ponies of Canterlot her solemn promise of protection, and then she had failed. She alone had exposed to mortal danger all of the ponies whom he himself had sworn to protect. Those beloved ponies had stood unguarded against darkness because of her proud shortcomings; her inability to live up to her own preaching which she had always leveled upon others like a queen. She would have led them all into vile fire if he had not broken with her orders and acted.
Alone and bedridden in his sunless room, the terrible thoughts had sunk into the wounds on his heart.
At the ceremony in his honor, fallen far into the depths of his all-encompassing pain – physical and emotional – he listened to what she had to say for herself; her apology and her praise for him.
And it wasn’t enough.
No matter how genuine her feelings, it just wasn’t enough!
It wasn’t enough for all of the lives which she had endangered! It wasn’t enough for all the protection she had traded away in vanity! It wasn’t enough for all foals she had held so close to the flame!
It wasn’t enough!
In that very moment, driven by all the chaos swirling inside of him, he made an angry decision.
Prideheart denounced Princess Celestia for all the lives she had failed to protect. He spat upon her apology. He renounced irrefutably his station in the Royal Guard, refusing to serve under her wings any longer. He even decried magic itself, feeling he knew now the great evils it was capable of, whether violently offensive evils like that which had caused his wounds or even repulsively passive evils like the impotence of the ’powerful’ princess. He rejected his medal, throwing it back at the princess in disgust. It bent and chipped as it crashed against the smoothed tiles of the throne room floor.
As Equestria was the home of everything he now reviled, Prideheart sought to escape his homeland forever. He vowed to lead all whom he could away from the evils of magic and a faithless, unservable sun. Quickly he gathered those ponies nearest and most loyal to him; friends and family who had known and trusted him all their lives. Stirred by the furious and insistent words of one whom they loved, and who had also already saved them once at great cost to himself, they too questioned the image they had always held of a glorious, powerful, and protective sun princess. Choosing in the end to trust the one who had incontestably proven his love and devotion, they followed Prideheart. His flock gathered, he and his ponies quit Canterlot with the declaration that they would never return.
Princess Celestia agonized over their departure. Being at the time the bearer of the Elements of Harmony, and having known personally the devastating loss of her own sister due to banishment, she understood well the hurt, risks, and dangers that such a rift between ponies bore. The tragedy of Prideheart’s fall had been immensely painful already, but by tearing ponies apart with a wedge of anger; by keeping them separated with walls of animosity; by burning fields so hate had room to grow...
... such awful things only invited more pain, in the end.
Their journey away from Equestria was not to chase peace or healing, despite their declarations. This she knew. If the pain of Prideheart was the fuel behind their flight, then the tragedy of the past would only extend further into the future.
But what could she, even as princess, justly do? After all the suffering Prideheart had endured because of her, how could she also steal from him his freedom? Maybe holding him against his will would spare all of those ponies who had chosen to go with him from whatever consequences his rash actions might bring. Maybe forcing him to stay would grant everypony the time needed to heal and to understand. Maybe any risk justified trying to save those ponies from willfully stepping further away from Harmony.
But to personally stab the already-wronged Prideheart with the pain of betrayal again...? Even for what she believed was the greater good...?
Could she...?
Her failure to trust the Royal Guard, and what that failure had wrought, had awakened in her such fear that she could dread no thing greater than being responsible for more harm to Prideheart. She had seen now what her overreliance on herself had caused and she trembled each time she thought of acting unilaterally again.
In the end she tearfully chose to take no action to impede their departure. Grievously she prayed that her decision was the right one. She prayed that one day the tragedy would end and the rift would heal. She prayed that one day there might come a pony who understood Harmony and friendship enough to atone for her own horrendous mistakes.
It was heartwrenching for her to see the end it had all come to: a noble unicorn whom she had been so proud to have watched grow into an immeasurably faithful defender; a pony who had been filled with so many good things that her spirit had always been delighted every time she had seen him shining golden in his armor; a selfless protector who in a moment of deepest crisis had heroically and without fear stepped up to save what she herself would have failed to save...
... now just a wounded victim of her choices, running, and in need of aid.
But her fear let him go.
Desiring to be forever free from Princess Celestia, Equestria, and all of magic itself, Prideheart led his followers far to the west, eventually crossing the immense Pearl Peaks. On the far side of those mountains laid a land untamed. Several times in the past ponies had tried to erect frontier villages there and each time their efforts had come to nothing. Though resilient ponies could raise towns, cities, and castles in many harsh places, there was something about that land which had always warded off their efforts and left the territory barren to pony life (save for wandering travelers and curious explorers who would often pass briefly through).
Among the many things in that outlying land which Prideheart and his ponies found was Dryearth Forest, a vast woodland with an imposing mystique. At first they were reminded of the infamous Forest of the Everfree, for these woods also seemed so wild. But they soon discovered a stark, and to them intriguing, difference between the two woods:
None of the creatures who lived in Dryearth Forest exhibited magical abilities or properties in any way whatsoever.
By probing the depths of the forest they eventually uncovered its secret; a secret which answered both why the animals of the forest lacked magic and why Equestrian ponies had always failed to settle the land.
In the very heart of the forest was a great spring, and its everflowing waters unceasingly pushed to the surface large, glowing crystals which naturally grew under the earth there. Those crystals shined because of a rare magivorous property. They constantly absorbed magic power: spells, enchantments, and even ambient magic which normally only lingered in the air. They ate magic. It was as harmless and simple as it was beautiful and elegant: eating magic, converting it, and radiating it away as simple light from their colorful, crystalline structures.
The heavy presence of those crystals enormously weakened magic’s power in Dryearth Forest, and the many rivers and streams that flowed out from that central spring carried crystal dust which broadened a weaker version of the same effect into the surrounding land. That was why Equestrian settlements had always failed: the innate magic so ever-present in pony culture had the muscle robbed from it there. Attunement to the land, manipulating the weather, unicorn’s spells; all normal parts of pony life, but all rendered unreliable for prospective frontiersponies. Without their full power the many settlers had found success perpetually elusive.
Celebration broke out amongst Prideheart’s faithful. Though the land and forest was not entirely devoid of magic as their hero had hoped for, it was the next best thing. They were far, far away from any interference by their former compatriots, the endless canopies of Dryearth Forest shielded them from the watchful light of the now-forsaken sun, and most importantly of all the crystals native there guarded them from the despicable power of magic.
Prideheart, however, did not abandon his wish to discover a new home further afield; one utterly and completely free of all magic. But he did understand the value of Dryearth Forest. The fact that other ponies had failed to live there because they had been too stuck on their rotten magic gave him a sense of vindication. He and his ponies were also exhausted from their long journey, and as he cared greatly for them he happily acquiesced to settling down for a time to recover. They planned to continue their journey later.
And so there at the wellspring in the center of Dryearth Forest they founded the village of Heartwood. In recognition of their rejection of magic, and in honor of the forest which blessed them with its safety, they rechristened themselves Dryponies.
But time lets roots grow strong.
The longer the Dryponies lingered in that place the more seeds they planted there, and the harder it became to swallow the idea of leaving. Prideheart always attempted to keep his ponies’ hopes up that one day they would depart and find a paradise truly free of magic. But as time continued to pass he began to realize the truth.
He was the only one there who earnestly held on to that hope.
The others, though regarding Prideheart with an outwardly faithful deference, gave reasons for staying at Heartwood which were many and varied:
They were “still tired of travel.”
Their temporary home was “good enough.”
They had “already escaped the wicked princess of the sun.”
They were sure that “sunponies would never find them, having not the strength to live somewhere without their awful magic.”
And so on.
Prideheart came to understand that he was always going to be divided from his followers. They were ponies who had followed him only in the heat of loyalty. They had rejected the sun princess and magic as he had asked, but though they had claimed these things faithfully they were also still just ordinary ponies with the same sacred needs for friends, family, love, and life. Needs which they now acted upon in Heartwood.
The Dryponies’ love of Prideheart was eternal, but their devotion to him had only carried them as far as the forest. Their passion had cooled and they could not anymore abandon their lives for his sake.
And he, though a broken hero after his ordeal, did not at that time have the wherewithal to abandon them despite his own wishes. He stayed with them.
The months became years, and the torches of camp became the lanterns of home.
As the years flew by in Heartwood, the old stories of Equestria began to be twisted or lost, and a new culture came to rise amongst the Dryponies. The hatred of magic became a part of their communal fabric, as well as did the unforgiving detestation of the abhorred sun. Their voluntary exile to the forest became to their memory a forced escape from the plight of persecution. Prideheart became to them only a representation of all ideals: nobility, to self-sacrifice for others; loyalty, to commit completely to those for whom one serves; independence, to stay free and live for oneself, away from any dire sunlight; strength and courage, to face down impossible odds without hesitation; and more. Even his wish of true escape merged into their new story, becoming a myth of a Walking Desert who would one day conveniently come to them and thereafter guide them forever away from the magical machinations of the wicked sun.
And so the Dryponies survived, and waited.
And survived, and waited.
And festered in their anger, hate, and resent; and waited.
And four hundred years passed by in that fashion.
By that latter day many of the details of Prideheart’s tragedy had become muddied to known history back in Equestria. Wryzard’s attack and banishment was known mostly only to those ponies who bothered to study old stories with enough zeal. More pointedly, because those who were most loyal and best knew Prideheart had left with him, memory of the fallen hero himself had vanished from all accounts of the attack, save for the personal recall of Princess Celestia.
And she had certainly never forgotten.
Being wise and resourceful she had easily been able to discern where Prideheart and his followers had fled to, but she had kept that knowledge in the same secret place as her shame and regret, sharing it never once. Through the intervening years she had grown committed to practicing her painfully relearned lesson on faith in others, but she had never found the full healing needed to reach out and attempt to peacefully recover her lost little ponies. The disgrace and cowardice she felt inside had always driven her to have let them be.
Sometime after the redemption of Nightmare Moon and the restoration of Princess Luna, the inevitable time for reckoning came.
Another group of Equestrian ponies had gone out to yet again try to tame the frontier beyond the Pearl Peaks. Unlike the many failures that had gone before them, the newest group was more dedicated, more stalwart, more resilient, and more clever than all prior. Where their ancestors had failed, they succeeded. In their unity, intelligence, strength, and resourcefulness, they overcame the drain of magic in the land and triumphantly began a small, successful village which they named Hamestown, right next to Dryearth Forest (then known as Unicorn Spring Forest to the ponies of Equestria, from a strange legend which had cropped up in the past four hundred years: supposedly unicorn foals had sometimes been found alone on the outskirts of the forest by explorers and travelers, as if the baby unicorns had sprung from the woods themselves).
Knowing that contact between her ponies and the Dryponies could not be avoided forever, Princess Celestia maintained a close interest but a distant eye on Hamestown. And fortunately for the princess, her prayer from long ago for a pony better versed in Harmony and friendship had been answered. She had at that time under her wing a faithful pupil by the name of Twilight Sparkle; a unicorn who had, along with her closest friends, become the new bearers of the Elements of Harmony, and the student herself was a pony personally well-studied in the magic of friendship.
Putting into her beloved student the faith she had four centuries ago failed to put into Prideheart and the Royal Guard, Princess Celestia dispatched Twilight and her friends to Hamestown. Then, as her harshest lesson had taught her, she merely stood aside in faith and prayed once more.
Her faith was not misplaced.
With patience, forgiveness, understanding, humility, and the strength of friendship, Twilight and her friends were able to convince the Dryponies to explore options of peace. When the Dryponies met personally the frontiersponies of Hamestown for the first time, they discovered that the so-called ’sunponies’ they had long reviled as enemies in their isolated tales were instead very much like themselves: ponies flush with nobility, loyalty, and strength, toiling hard to live an independent life on the frontier. Common ground was found, and peace was forged.
Shown forgiveness and understanding by the princess’s pupil, even in the face of their rage and aggression, the wayward Dryponies grew the very bravery of heart they needed to pass along the same forgiveness to Princess Celestia. They met with her, and they pardoned her for her role in the fall of their hero four hundred years ago.
At long last Harmony had been restored.
The great rift which had been caused by foolish pride, noble sacrifice, and evil dragon fire had finally closed up and healed.
For most.
The rift in Princess Celestia’s heart remained.
Dryponies and ’sunponies’ had come together again, but sun and hero had not. Nor could the golden reconciliation four-centuries-late have ever restored her and him at all, for the trail of a broken hero was not the same path the Dryponies had walked.
Much to the princess’s grief, the inheritors of Prideheart’s legacy could not answer what had ever happened to Prideheart himself. What end he had ever come to; what final words of her he may have ever had; what forgivenesses he may have found or what outrages he may have still held on to...
They did not know his fate.
Their stories remembered only that, in his later years, after having spent some decades in Heartwood, he had simply upped and vanished. He had gathered a small few things and had left by himself without having said a word to anypony.
Like everything which they had dealt with in their isolation the Dryponies had in time wrapped his surprising departure into their self-serving mythology. At first it had been with reasonable and rational thoughts: their hero had gone for an unexpected patrol and some mundane fate had befallen him. In time, as his absence had grown longer, the grand power of their myth had expanded upon it: their hero had left in search of the Walking Desert, to speed the day of their full escape; or perhaps he had gone to find the promised land himself, and he would have eventually returned to have shown them the way. When so much time had passed that his death – even if just by age – had been assured, the final version of their legend had come about: their hero had prepared them for their long destiny of waiting for the Walking Desert to arrive and guide them away from the wicked sun, and in faith and trust he had left them to meet their destiny on their own.
In their willful and blind devotion to their self-selected destiny they had made themselves immune to seeking out the truth, whatever it may have been. Despite any good intentions in their hearts, Prideheart the legend had become more important to them than Prideheart the pony.
And so it seemed that even with Harmony restored nopony would ever know what had become of the hero who had let himself be seared and cursed to save Canterlot. Perhaps being forgotten in that particular way was another sacrifice he had taken upon himself for the sake of others.
Perhaps he had never escaped Equestria as his infernal pain had begged him to.
Or perhaps he had never escaped being a hero.