//------------------------------//
// Prologue 
// Story: My Little Pony: Monster Hunting is Magic 
// by Tharnax 
//------------------------------//

	This is it, isn't it?  If only I had actually LISTENED to my friends.  They told me something seemed off about it, but no, I just couldn't listen to them, could I?  I had to try to prove them all to be pansies.  Everything was growing dark as the man saw the Rathalos go for the kill.  I am such a fool.  The world faded with these last thoughts.





“Will he be alright?” Asked Twilight.  She had found an unknown stallion covered in blood in the Everfree forest.  His bleeding had stopped by the time she had found him, and she safely brought him back to Ponyville.  Whatever it was that attacked him, I have no knowledge of it.  It seems to have been a dragon, but smaller.
“We can't say for certain, his chances for survival seem fifty-fifty.  Tell me, princess, where did you find him?” the nurse asked.
“In the Everfree forest.  You see…”





(Earlier that day)

Now what might that be? Twilight witnessed a small portal opening from her castle.  It seemed to be just above the Everfree forest.  I'll have to- something dropped from the portal.  What in the wide world of Equestria?
“Spike, come with me,” Twilight said.  She hurriedly levitated Spike onto her back.
“What's going on?” Spike asked.
“I'm not entirely sure, all I saw was a portal open above the Everfree forest, and something dropped out of it.”
“What was it?”
“I don't know what it was, but we're going to find out.”  Twilight set off to find out what had fallen from that portal.  Unfortunately, Twilight thought, I don't have much to go on and I can't pinpoint the location in which it fell.
Twilight eventually reached the Everfree forest.  This was not a place to mess around in, it's too dangerous; she knew from experience.  After all, she had been turned to stone by a cockatrice.  Oh, Twilight could easily deal with most threats now, though she'd rather not have to use magic to destroy a living creature.  She had never done that before, and would much rather keep it that way.
As Twilight moved through the forest, she kept her eyes open for something out of place.  Hopefully, she would be able to find whatever it was that fell, and soon.  If it was alive, it wouldn't last long. Especially not after a fall like that.  From a distance, Twilight noticed a tree with broken branches.  The branches appeared to have had something dropped on them.  A pony, perhaps?  Twilight walked around the tree. 
There, lying on forest floor, covered in blood, was a stallion she had never seen before.  Next to him lay a pile of...armor?  What kind of armor is that?  The armor looked like a mixture of plate and...and what?  All she could tell was it was taken off of something that was greenish.  “We have to hurry, he can't last much longer like this.”  Levitating the body and the armor, Twilight hurried back to Ponyville.





“...That's what happened.”  Twilight said, worried.
“I don't know if he'll make it, princess, I just don't.”  The nurse said, worried.
That night, Twilight was studying.  She had to know what could have caused those kind of injuries on that stallion.  How had he gotten in that kind of danger in the first place?  The only situation she could think of where somepony wore armor and fought dragons were fictional characters, similar to the fairy tale of a heroic pony who fought a dragon to save the princess.  However, there haven't been any dragons that size near Ponyville that could have caused marks the size that stallion had.  The closest dragon she knew to that size was spike, who was just a baby dragon.
Defeated, Twilight went to bed.  The only one who could give her the answers she was looking for was was the pony she had found, and he might not make it through the night.