Uncharted: Equestria

by Rayvinne

Drake's Disharmony

Nathan awoke to find himself laying on a cold stone floor, and too a rather large rat sniffing his face.

"Guruuaaghh!" Nate screamed, smacking the rat away. He sat up and took in his surroundings. He wasn't locked up, thankfully. He was laying in what appeared to be a disused waiting room, presumably for an office of some sort. Nathan picked himself up, and used a nearby wooden chair to keep him from keeling over. After the bloodrush had left his head and the dots left his weary eyes, he became aware of shouting. Particularly, the shouting of a woman. A very angry woman.

"We said bring him to us, not knock him cold, Stalwart!" The voice bellowed from a nearby room, it's incredible volume reverberating in the castle's stone walls. "We want thou to check on the being and make sure that he is not harmed, and if he is, you shall be disciplined!" Nathan shuddered a little at the commanding voice that still bounced around in his ears as the sound of hoofs...yes, hoofs, came closer. A partitally rotten wooden door on the far side of the room creaked open, and one of the ponies that had knocked him out however long ago walked in, still wearing his deep purple armor. It noticed that Nathan was awake, and nodded towards him.

"Come." it instructed, gesturing for the door and room beyond. Nathan obeyed the gruff pony, grumbling to himself. The room that the door led too was, matter of fact, an office. Inside sat several duty shelves, discarded mounds of paper, and a massive wooden desk. Behind said desk, sat another pony. Except this one was female, and decorated with various pieces of jewelry and regalia. Nathan assumed this was the one that had been shouting her head off only moments ago. Despite the aforementioned screaming, she looked at him with calm, hollow eyes. The mare had both a horn and wings, and her size made the massive stallion that had taken him in look like a child's toy. It's not that she was fat, no, she was far from it, but she was nearly twice as tall as the other. And while the male had what appeared to be a mane made of a bat wing, the mare's didn't even appear to be real, it looked as sort of a dark mist that flowed out of her head, gently waving in a non-existent wind that reflected the night sky. The human and regal pony examined eachother, the former in a semi-shocked state, the the latter with mild curiosity. The mare spoke first.

"Thou are a very tough being, mister. Thou was in the desert for four days, would thou care for a drink of water?" she asked, and Nathan was suddenly aware of how deteriorated his condition was. He remembered the water bottle that Victor had given him and fished it out. Bone dry. This was even worse than after his stay in the Rub' al Khali, and he slowly nodded towards the regal pony. A pounding headache and a severe sunburn decided that this would be the time they make themselves known, and he massaged his temples. The mare instructed her reluctant companion to fetch a pitcher of water. The stallion gave Nathan a look that said Move one inch and I'll end you before heading out. "Please forgive Stalwart, he is one of the last two of our personal guards that remain, and he refuses to leave his post." Her voice sounded tired and hollow, lacking the brief vibrance it held when she was scolding Stalwart. "We will explain to thee as much as possible, and when thou is in better health, we shall expect the same in return." The guard pony returned with a pitcher of lukewarm water and two mugs, which Nathan eagerly accepted. "We used to be called Princess Luna, but you may address us simply as 'Luna' for now. Come with me, I shall give you a brief history of the land you now occupy." Luna and her Stalwart led Nathan through a series of dank hallways, in an attempt to find the long forgotten Hall Of History. Upon their arrival to the ancient hall, Luna began to tell the history of Equestria, meanwhile Nathan, who was becoming sharper and more focused, thanks to a supply of water, was getting more and more skeptical that he really was talking to ponies.

"With all due respect, how do I know you're real, and that I'm not dead or hallucinating or something? I've seen some pretty damn weird things, but this is one of the weirdest." He watched Luna nod to the guard, who promptly gave him a good buck in the gut. "Oh shi...uummphh...why...the hell...did you....do that? Nate groaned, doubling over.

"Because if you were dead, you wouldn't feel it, and if this was a hallucination, you wouldn't feel it." the guard smirked at him and turned back to Luna, smiling.

"Thy didn't have to buck him that hard, Stalwart..." she told him, getting a groan in agreement from Nathan. Luna ignored his grumbling and began to tell him the history of the once great land. "The land you are in used to be known as the kingdom of Equestria, ruled under my sister and myself. Obviously, it is no longer." she told him, sorrow and despair penetrated deep into her voice, and her whole body seemed to become dull and lifeless as she spoke. She told him the stories of Nightmare Moon, and Discord, and the six brave mares who defeated them. She spoke about the Changelings, then the insane mare who had ruined it all. "...nopony figured out who it was, that blue mare, but she rampaged through Ponyville, killing or wounding many. My sister, at the time, was visiting her student in Ponyville, and they were returning from a walk in the nearby woods. Celestia decided to intervene, but the mare...she attacked my sister, and her ever faithful student jumped in to help defend her town without hesitation." Luna paused to wipe a tear from her cheek, then continued. "The attacker wielded immeasurable power, and both sides were straining to overpower the other. Celestia and Twilight joined together to use the same spell, a stone casting spell, to lock away the mare, while the mare herself charged a very different spell. An annihilation spell, the kind that had been banished my me and my sister centuries ago. Both sides fired at the same time, and the spells matched dead center. Then they backfired. My sister and Twilight cast themselves in stone, and the mare was incinerated into a small pile of ashes." By now, Luna's head was hanging low, and tears flowed freely down her face. "As I explained earlier, my sister raises the sun, and I control the moon and stars. Without my sister, the sun could not be lowered, I tried and tried, but I couldn't budge the sun, only Celestia has the power to do so, I may move billions of them, but ours is special, and only Celly's..." she droned off, weeping openly onto the floor. Nate sat on the dusty floor and waited, pondering why Luna constantly mixed the third and first person when she spoke. In the background, the faint sound of hoof steps could be heard.

"Luna, The Doctor said he made a breakthrough and wishes to..." the owner of the voice rounded a corner to see Luna weeping silently on the floor, with Stalwart Hide and some kind of creature greedily drinking from a near empty pitcher of water. "Luna, what's wrong?" the owner of the voice asked. It...er...he looked like one of the ponies that had captured him earlier that day. Or the day before, since nights didn't really exist anymore. The armored stallion rushed towards the weeping Luna and began to comfort her, running his hoof through her mane. It wasn't the first time this had happened.

"It's my fault..." she sobbed "It's my fault that everypony is dead! My incompetence killed us all!" the stallion gently held the weeping mare, trying to help her calm down. After what seemed like hours, Luna had calmed enough to continue her story, but the stallion, who was named Aegis Shield, stayed to comfort her, and Stalwart left to attend to other matters. "Eventually, Equestria started to dry up. Ponies started to wither away with the land, starvation and dehydration started to kill them all off. We tried everything we could to break the stone spell, but nothing prevailed. The Elements of Harmony may have been able to do it, but the blue mare's rampage had left two of them confirmed dead, and Twilight set in stone." the tears had started to come again, and Luna was doing everything she could to keep herself together. "Rumors had gone around that two of them had made it away from the mare's violent rampage, and had hid in the Everfree Forest, which for reasons unknown, remains untouched by the desert heat and sand. I managed to get one of them here, along with a few other ponies from around the Kingdom, but we don't have many emergency supplies in the castle, so we couldn't save many. A few ponies fled to other lands, beyond the reaches of the desert, and other creatures who had little power before have taken over parts of Equestria, such as Diamond Dogs, Dragons, and even the Buffalo have claimed parts of the desert for themselves." Luna instructed Aegis to bring Nate to the rest of the ponies and get him situated with a bunk, so she could have time to collect herself.

Nate lay on a pallet that had been assembled on the floor, as the pony bunks were way too small for his human body. Not that he was complaining, he'd slept in far worse conditions. The ponies reception to him had been fairly warm, considering the conditions. Total, there were of them in the castle. They'd shared names and stories over some kind of vegetable stew. As far as he could recall, their names were Lyra, who was absolutely ecstatic to meet him. Her partner, Bon Bon, wasn't as overjoyed as Lyra was, but she held no hostilities. Next was Braeburn, the best Nathan could match this cowboy style pony was to some lawman from an old western flick. His country charm worked on just about everyone...er...everypony around. After Braeburn was Rainbow Dash, one of the Elements of Harmony, and the only one who was known to still be alive, for the most part, Rainbow stayed to herself. She didn't talk to anypony, didn't go about boasting, in fact, she hardly even gave Nate a second glance. The next three ponies were much more optimistic with their situation, despite how much they had lost. They acted as a family, enduring the rest of their lives together. Doctor Whooves, Dinky Doo, who was affectionately nicknamed 'Derpy', and their daughter, Dinky. There was something about Doctor Whooves that reminded him of home, but he couldn't quiet put his tongue on it. After the Whooves family, the only two left, aside from Luna and her guards, was another wing-plus-horn pony and her husband, who just had a horn. Their names were something along the lines of Cadence and Shining Armor. Oh yeah, how could he forget! There was one more, a plain grey pony, who had a treble cleft on her bum. She was very formal and calm when she introduced herself, but anyone with a brain could see in her eyes that she had long ago given up on living, as if the one thing she cared about most had been ripped away. Nathan could see her sitting on a stool in the corner of the room he was in, softly playing on a Cello, then making notes on some old, disused parchment. He drifted off into a restless sleep listening to her music. Octavia's music.

Muffins. That's the smell Nate awoke too. Blueberry muffins. And they smelled delicious. He wrangled himself out of his blankets that he had somehow twisted onto himself during the 'night'. How they kept the time, he would never know. The sun didn't move. Nathan made his way to where the ponies had gathered for muffins. Victor and Elena probably thought he was dead. To them, he went splat on some dirt in the middle of nowhere. Luna and her guard were present, although they lacked their armor. They looked like two normal ponies-with-wings. Or Pegasai, as he had been told. The only thing that distinguished them from the others was their medallions that hung around their necks. Luna, on the other hand, was still wearing all her royal garments. She had calmed down considerably, but her puffy red eyes showed that she had spent the majority of her 'night' crying, and Aegis comforted her quietly as they ate. Or Stalwart, he couldn't tell who was who. Luna ended up the first to break the silence that blanketed the gathering area.

"Mister human, I do believe thou promised us to tell about thyself." she took a bite from her muffin. "So please, tell us about yourself." Nathan hesitated for a moment, finished his muffin, then looked directly at her.

"Okay, well, my name is Nathan. Nathan Drake. I'm a human, and on my planet I was a treasure hunter..." he related the stories of his adventures to the group of ponies, who were all eager to listen, however exaggerated they were. He ended with his waking up in the desert, which left a somewhat dismal mood hanging on the crowd, especially after the heroic ending of Iram of the Pillars. Heroic for him, at least.

"I think he is perfect, Luna." said a specific brown earth pony, who had a hourglass tattoo thing on his bum. Doctor Whooves, was it? "It was a stroke of luck that we brought him when he was about the die, on both of our parts at least." Luna nodded in agreement.

"Yes, Doctor, I believe you are right."

"Doctor Whooves...Doctor Whooves...Doctor...Whooovvess....that's it! Doctor Who! My god, it's a pony Doctor Who! Uncanny resembelence, too bad Cutter isn't here, I'm sure he'd love that. thought Nate, who had zoned out somewhat during his internal revelation.

"Pony to Nate? Hellooo, mister human, you in there?" The Doctor waved his hoof in front of Nathan's face, which startled him out of his trance.

"Huh?" he said, confused, getting snickers from several of the other ponies.

"Nathan Drake, we have an assignment for thou, if thy is willing to accept." spoke Luna, who had adopted a very formal posture.

"Eh, why not?" The trace of a faint smile graced Luna's lips for the briefest of moments before she turned.

"Good. Doctor, Rainbow Dash, and Stalwart, follow us." she quipped, leading them out of the living quarters for the ponies and back towards the Hall of History. "The Doctor has done some research, Mister Drake, and has uncovered something of great interest. Long ago, my sister and myself created a sort of time traveling device, dubbed the Orb of Time, for simplicity's sake. We had thought it lost when I was lost to Nightmare Moon and banished, but the Doctor has evidence otherwise. According to some dusty old book, the Orb was stowed in a vast cavern beneath the old castle of the Royal Pony Sisters, deep in the Everfree forest." she stopped at a brick wall. A plain brick wall. Plain, at least, until she lowered her head and slid her horn into a barely noticeable slot in the masonry. There was a loud bang, followed by a repeated clink clink clink sound as an ancient lock, long forgotten came to life. The section of wall itself began to slide into the floor, revealing the vast room beyond. "What few ponies know, is that humans have been to Equestria before, and we have recorded what they all have said. From what we can gather, you are a violent, warring race, competing for your wavering planet's resources. The last humans that visited came about seventy five years ago, fighting what they called World War Two, according to the texts that were written about them. Three claimed to be with a group called the 'Americans and Allied Forces' and two others with the 'Nazi Regime'." She walked into the musky room, lighting candles with magic as she went. "We kept their stuff, as they seemed inclined to hurt eachother." she gestured to the now lit storage room, which was loaded with artifacts from all periods of Earth's history. Armor and Lances from the dark ages, all the way up to a Willy's Jeep and two M1 Garands from World War Two. But it went further than that! There were a few ancient frag grenades, a German Luger P08, and even a single Bazooka! "We were hoping that thy would be willing to help us find it...we would give anything to return to our old lives, to see our loved ones again." The tears had started again, but she hadn't had a total breakdown just yet. "Thy would not go alone, The Doctor, Rainbow, and Stalwart shall accompany you." Nathan thought deeply for a moment, before smiling to the weeping mare. He had nothing to loose, right?

"I'll do it, as long as I don't have to deal with time thingymajigs." he made funny handmotions to emphasize his point.

"Deal." she smiled and wept more, but this time, with joy.

Nathan found himself in an ancient, yet well kept Willies jeep, thundering across a vast desert. The Jeep was loaded with supplies and ponies. Behind them was the remnants of the Castle. Ahead loomed a forest. The Everfree forest.

Wow. Three thousand words. I over-wrote a bit there. Oh well, the more the merrier, right?! Anyhow, I would like to thank Aegis Shield for allowing me to use his OC guard ponies Aegis Shield and Stalwart Hide in my story, and I highly suggest you read his stories, if you haven't already. Please point out grammar and typing mistakes, so I can get them fixed ASAP!